Massively Multiplayer (8 page)

He may have been alone in his admiration for the old man’s gamesmanship. The Archimago employees were looking alternately terrified and worshipful, depending on whether they thought Calloway would view them as part of the company’s problems or part of its solutions.

“Enough unpleasantness. On to our bright future. Since the departure of Mr. Kipling leaves us with an opening, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Bernardo Calloway to the position of CEO of Archimago Technologies.”

This announcement provoked mixed reactions from the crowd. Mingled gasps of surprise and relief issued from the Archimago employees who realized that Calloway senior wasn’t extending the bloodbath of the previous minutes into their ranks. The press corps seemed alternately bemused and perplexed, primarily on the basis of whether or not they’d even known that Vitus Calloway
had
a son.

Wolfgang did his best to maintain a facade of studied indifference, as though he’d known the appointment were coming all along; which wasn’t too far from the truth, given the broad hints which Vitus Calloway had been dropping during their tour of the facilities. But even if Bernardo’s selection didn’t come as a surprise, it still presented a number of puzzles which he had yet to solve, chief among them what type of CEO Bernardo would be. Wolfgang set down his spoon and considered the younger Calloway, who was now rising to the belated applause of the assembled guests.

“Thank you, father. Thank you everyone.” Bernardo’s British was, if possible, even more proper than that of his father, even if it lacked the energy. He sounded to Wolfgang as though he were reading from a teleprompter hanging invisibly in the air before him. Maybe he’d had one implanted on a contact lens.

“I know that I am unfamiliar to most of you -- certainly to those of you working here at Archimago -- and you are likely wondering about my background and my preparation for the work to be done here. However, I should like to focus on the future here, rather than the past. We will all have the opportunity to get to know one another before long, and I shall endeavor to earn your respect and your trust, as employees and colleagues, in the months ahead. And so, rather than go into any further detail about myself I would like to move on to the real story of the evening, the release of the new Crucible, version 4.0. I don’t mind stating that some of the central advances in this new revision of our flagship product were brought to fath-...that is, Mr. Vitus Calloway’s attention by myself, at the behest of a number of University chums from Harvard Business school, so I have had the privilege of seeing this work through from the very first day. Perhaps the success of this project will help to introduce my vision for this company, as we take the oldest netvironment in existence with us into the next decade.”

There was scattered applause, mostly, Wolfgang noted, from the middle-management of Archimago, those who hadn’t followed Kipling and his cronies out the door. It was a brilliant bit of stage-managing, he realized: after the harshness of Vitus’ pronouncements, people were prepared to meet anything from the younger Calloway as a positive breath of sunshine. And his inclusion of himself in the Crucible family -- his pointed use of “we” instead of “you” -- had likely cemented the deal in the minds of many in his audience. Bernardo and Vitus: good cop and bad cop, and it was a cinch which way the crowd would swing. He mentally recalibrated his assessment of Bernardo; inexperienced and boring as he might seem, he was obviously clever.

“There has been a great deal of speculation,” Bernardo continued, “in both the media, and within the industry generally, about this release of Crucible. The problem is that of consumer-standardization. The consumer from, say, New York has to have compatible aims for the product as one from, say, Jakarta, or else they will never be able to create what we call purchase-synergy. Simply put, if the gamer from Jakarta is used to a netvironment predicated upon inter-consumer relations, while the one from the U.S. is interested in ‘slaying monsters,’ there can be no exchange of cultural commodity. The content has to be orientation-standardized in order to maximize international marketability…”

Most of the industry reporters, Wolfgang noted, were nodding their heads sagely, though whether they understood Bernardo’s fluent marketing-speak was anyone’s guess. The programmers looked mostly baffled, while the actors and writers feigned interest while paying most of their attention to their desserts.

“Luckily,” Bernardo intoned significantly, “there are trackable geo-dependant elements which are both cross-culturally consumer-adaptive and easily commodifiable. These and other elements, then, become the primary goal-orientations of the netvironment as a whole, to be adapted for each server as an independent marketing entity, focused upon a geographically realized consumer target-group, but available to a wider audience of consumers as demand would decree.

“This, then, is our challenge: to market the Crucible brand to its full potential, to develop the product for more market-niches, to execute a radical re-invention of the Crucible engine which will make our vision a reality...”

As the reporters filed forward to ask about the specifics of the deal, Wolfgang could only notice that none of them were asking the essential questions: what did Bernardo mean about “standardization of consumers?” And what would the players think about being treated as consumers anyway? He had the nagging sensation that he’d just heard something supremely disturbing, but he couldn’t quite pin down what it was. It was like watching a poker player so confident in his game that he would play with his cards face up, sure that he couldn’t be bested...but Wolfgang couldn’t make sense of the cards, or even what the stakes were. For a man who depended on his sense of order and structure for both his livelihood and his self-confidence, it was...unbalancing. He ordered another cup of coffee, humming the first movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony.

Chapter Five – People to People

Guilt is the second-most compelling emotion of which we are capable. Next only to love, that great tidal wave of the psyche, guilt obliges us to act contrary to our own minds, our own interests, and our own hearts.

Why Andrew felt guilty when he confronted his sister over breakfast was a mystery. Perhaps the abortive conversations they’d stumbled through the day before convinced him that he owed her more attention. Or perhaps it was merely the lingering effect of his encounter with Gil, the sense that he was about to be roped into something. If he was, as he suspected and as his parents assured him, without direction, ever at the mercy of others’ interests, then let him, just once in a while, at least choose whose interests he would serve.

“What are you doing today?”

Sara looked up from her meal, the reflected light of the animations on the cereal box painting her soft features. “Nothing. I was going to go to a club. Junie got me a new address for a net where she says I can download interactives.”

“Would you rather go shopping? I mean at the mall? The real mall, not online?”

Sara’s interest warred visibly with the natural suspicion of all siblings when confronted with unexpected generosity. “Why? What are you doing at the mall?”

“Nothing,” Andrew replied glibly, aiming for a trustworthy smile. “Just looking for something to do. I thought you might want to go shopping. Since mom and dad are working.” He gestured over his shoulder at the closed door to their parents’ room.

“Okay. Let me get dressed.”

And so they went shopping. Andrew surprised himself by remembering the correct code for his parents’ local shuttle service. Then he surprised himself again by enjoying the trip. After a summer spent almost entirely in the company of his computer, even the moderate physicality of a shopping trip felt novel. And his sister, usually a ready source of acid wit at home, seemed sincerely grateful for the diversion.

The food, chemically identical to that which was delivered daily to their home, seemed somehow both fresher and more authentic in the restaurant where they had lunch. As they ate, small, colorful birds flew through the tropically-themed interior, splashing in fern-edged pools only a few feet from their table. Briefly Andrew wondered whether they were holographic or real, before discounting the question as unimportant. They were amusing for their own sake, and he appreciated the opportunity to see them with his own eyes, rather than through the goggles of his computer rig.

The birds were beautiful and so, he realized after an hour of wandering, was his sister. The bright plumage of teenage fashion, augmented today by a set of holographic wings, lent strength to the resemblance. Like them, she flitted from place to place, full of an energy which made him feel, at the advanced age of twenty years, hopelessly old.

Once, he almost brought up the troubles he was facing in his game, but, ashamed at the idea of intruding into her pleasure with a tension that seemed more remote and unimportant the more time he spent away from the computer, he remained silent. Catching his hesitation, she asked him what he was thinking.

“Not much.” Realizing he sounded evasive, he sought out the trouble which seemed most real. “School, I guess. My vacation’s almost over, and then I go back and then it’s one more year. Maybe one more term after that, to catch up classes I missed earlier. And then I’ll graduate, and I’ll have to find a real job. Hah! If there is one, I mean. I don’t know, with a degree in tech-studies, maybe you’ll see me in one of these stores some day, selling virlos or something.”

She considered the idea seriously, then shook her head. “You’d be good at that. But I don’t think so. You’re too…” she groped for a word, lurking somewhere on the other side of a chasm of awkwardness, then hurdled over it: “good. You’re really good.”

The pronouncement startled him. “Good? You mean like too good for selling things?”

“No,” she shook her head, embarrassed now, but certain. “I mean you’re good. You do good things, you’re nice. Tatty has an older brother, and he’s always yelling, at everyone. Once time he gave her a burn on her arm, on purpose, with a cigarette. She had to go to a hospital. You’re the opposite of that.

“So I’m a nice guy. Thanks, I guess.”

Sara scowled, thinking deeply. “Nooo...being good is more than being nice. Anybody can be nice, they just have to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Don’t steal cars. Don’t beat up old women.”

“So I’m not a sociopath. That’s good to know.”

“Don’t interrupt. I meant that you’re more like the person who would patch up Tatty when her brother burned her arm. You’re like a person who would make sure he’d never do it in the first place.”

Sara suddenly became enormously interested in the food on her plate, and Andrew realized she was self-conscious. Stylishly jaded Sara, who regularly ran conversational rings around her tongue-tied brother, caught expressing sincere emotion. How unfashionable!

They ate in silence for a moment. One of the chittering birds darted down from its artificial tree to perch on the edge of their table. Andrew held out a soy chip, and was gratified when it pecked the morsel out of his hand. So, they were real after all. Microchips in their brains, or subtle genetic modifications, must have been used to modify their behavior, keeping them in the restaurant.

Sara interrupted his thoughts. “All I meant was that I don’t think you’ll end up selling things. That’s all. You’ll find some job where you end up helping people.”

“Like a doctor?”

“Yeah. Well, no. More like a lawyer. Or maybe a social worker. Or a teacher. Remember that time I was going to jump down the stairs?”

“Anybody would have stopped you from doing that.”

“Maybe. But the time I was going to tell Jenna about how I hated her boyfriend, and you talked me out of it. And it wasn’t just being nosy -- you found a way for me to talk to her that made it ok. And that time you guessed I’d be caught sneaking in late, and you took Mom and Dad out? Or even just that time last week when you knew Dad was coming home from his face-day at work late and you had dinner out? Or my fish. Remember how you saved my fish when I was overfeeding them?”

“So I provide food to tired face-day workers and first-aid for goldfish. I have a shining future in either catering or as a vet. Wait, I can combine them: sushi chef!”

Sara flicked a bit of rice at him. “No, idiot. Did I mention you can also be a sarcastic jerk? What I meant was that you just do nice things, all the time, even when people won’t notice. It’s kind of a rare quality. That’s what you do. You stop people from feeling bad, before they even know its going to happen. You should be proud of that.” She graced him with one more quick smile, so sincere that his cheeks burned.

Then she was wiping her mouth, tossing her plate into the recycler, and ducking away into the glittering cavern of a nearby store selling holographic companions, and he was left alone. Not quite alone, of course, since he carried with him a new light, a small burning sensation between embarrassment and gratitude ...an indefinable sense of grace which fluttered, in his head, like a genetically modified bird.

Updating Crucible essential files. There will be a brief delay.

Loading...100%.

Welcome to Crucible v 4.0. Druin the Thief. Circle: 6. Wealth: 1,450.

Even before he stepped downstairs, the changes were obvious. Damned if he couldn’t actually smell the room!

It wasn’t just one smell, either. There was a heady cocktail of scents: fresh laundry, baking bread, old beer, leather, and metal. Oddly, focusing on the scents caused them to retreat into vague, flat impressions, memories rather than sensory perceptions. In order to fully enjoy them, he had to maintain a slightly fuzzy half-awareness. Andrew suspected that the bandwidth necessary to generate complex scents through acupressure micro-pulses sent through his computer would be prohibitive. Instead, the Crucible programmers must be firing off tiny, imperceptible bits of visual or auditory data which convinced his semi-lucid brain to access the scents they were aiming for. Yes, there, in the corner of his peripheral vision, he was almost certain a tiny sparkle of light was part of the new data-stream which had been added to the netvironment.